Like many folks, I was a small child when I first heard a playground rhyme about a woman named Lizzie Borden.

According to the mantra: “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks/And, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

As an adult, I accidentally learned one day that while Lizzie Borden was tried for murder, she had been acquitted! I was surprised at this because I had assumed that she had been found guilty and, perhaps, executed.

Whoever wrote the rhyme gave me (and countless other playground denizens) a false impression. But why would anyone slander a person...